Performativity
- LAST REVIEWED: 10 March 2015
- LAST MODIFIED: 10 March 2015
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0114
- LAST REVIEWED: 10 March 2015
- LAST MODIFIED: 10 March 2015
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0114
Introduction
Performativity is the power of language to effect change in the world: language does not simply describe the world but may instead (or also) function as a form of social action. The concept of performative language was first described by the philosopher John L. Austin who posited that there was a difference between constative language, which describes the world and can be evaluated as true or false, and performative language, which does something in the world. For Austin, performative language included speech acts such as promising, swearing, betting, and performing a marriage ceremony. For instance, the utterance, “I do”—said under the right circumstances by the right speakers with the right intentions—transforms the utterer from being unmarried to being married. Austin posited a number of felicity conditions that must be met in order for such utterances to function performatively. Other scholars have taken up these basic insights to explore the various ways in which language can do things in the world. Most notably, Judith Butler developed the concept of performativity to describe how gender is constructed in the 1990s. Butler argued that gender is an ongoing and socially constructed process, which proceeds through a continuous series of performative acts, from, for example, the utterance of “It’s a boy!” on through a person’s lifetime. Performativity, then, is the process of subject formation, which creates that which it purports to describe and occurs through linguistic means, as well as via other social practices. Following Butler, the concept of performativity has been richly explored in anthropological studies of gender and sexuality. Scholars of ritual have also used the concept of performative action and performativity very productively, looking at how rituals work performatively to have effects on the world. Other types of performances have been also analyzed from a performative viewpoint. In the late 1990s, anthropologists and other scholars studying economies began to consider economic performativity, or how the practices of economists and other financial experts are not simply descriptive of their subject but also serve to shape it. Not surprisingly, given the concept’s initial conceptualization as linguistic in nature, linguistic anthropologists in particular have found the concept analytically useful. A number of challenges and issues have characterized scholarly debates about performative language and performativity. These include the role of actors’ intentions and issues of agency, the importance of context, the iterability or repeated versus spontaneous nature of performative action, and the effects of social roles and distributions of power across participants.
Foundational Texts
How To Do Things with Words (Austin 1962) is the foundational text on performative language: here Austin introduces and elaborates on the differences between constative or descriptive language and performative language and eventually moves to describe all linguistic acts as belonging to three types: locutionary (language that describes), illocutionary (language that does things in the world), and perlocutionary (language that is the effect of that doing). In other words, performative force, or the ability to “do things with words” was expanded to cover a much broader range of linguistic activity than the discrete speech acts of promising, swearing, betting, etc. Authored by a student of Austin’s, Searle 1969 developed these categories into what has been known as “speech act theory”; Benveniste 1971 similarly expounded upon speech act theory with a focus on efficacy and speaker roles. Butler 1990 and Butler 1993 are key texts in the development of performativity as a social process as related to gender, sex, and sexuality; Butler 1997 theorized the politics of performativity in speech. In a work that is a key text in science and technology studies, Lyotard 1984 argued that doing science includes a degree of performativity.
Austin, John L. 1962. How to do things with words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
Introduces the concept of performative as opposed to constative language and laid the foundations of speech act theory. Discusses the locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary functions of language. Felicity conditions and infelicitous failures are both the subject of much theorizing.
Benveniste, Emile. 1971. Analytical philosophy and language. In Problems in general linguistics. Translated by Mary Elizabeth Meek, 231–238. Coral Gables, FL: Univ. of Miami Press.
Explores and expands Austin’s concept of performatives to stress the importance of considering performative efficacy and power vis-à-vis participant roles and how particular speech acts are contextualized. For Benveniste, performatives depend on the authority of the speaker and are inherently reflexive in nature.
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.
Butler’s approach to gender builds on the work of Foucault to theorize gender as the product of social activity. Initial discussion of performativity from Austin’s performative speech as it relates to gender, how it functions via iterability (or repetition) and does not rely on the intention of the actor.
Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of “sex.” London: Routledge.
Further elaboration of how gender performativity works through the ongoing process of repeated acts of “doing gender,” which functions to make these actions appear essential or natural. In appearing to be the elaboration of biological sex, the performativity of gender in turn (re)inscribes sex on the body in particular ways.
Butler, Judith. 1997. Excitable speech: A politics of the performative. New York: Routledge.
Develops the performativity of political discourse, working from various examples of hate speech and other types of public discourse in which power is enacted. Shows that resignification of such speech is always possible, although it occurs within complex historical and social interrelationships.
Lyotard, Jean-François. 1984. The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge. Translated by Geoffrey Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.
Portrays science as a language game, building on Wittgenstein’s concept of language games, which depends on the performativity of language about scientific discovery (people describing it as true make it true), so as to justify its financing.
Searle, John. 1969. Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Fleshes out and elaborates Austin’s work to develop speech act theory, in particular how different types of utterances have different types of relationships to and effects on the world. Discusses how the illocutionary force of speech depends on uttering the right words, in the right way, under the right circumstances.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- Africa, Anthropology of
- Aging
- Agriculture
- Animal Cultures
- Animal Ritual
- Animal Sanctuaries
- Anorexia Nervosa
- Anthropocene, The
- Anthropological Activism and Visual Ethnography
- Anthropology and Education
- Anthropology and Theology
- Anthropology of Islam
- Anthropology of Kurdistan
- Anthropology of the Senses
- Anthrozoology
- Antiquity, Ethnography in
- Applied Anthropology
- Archaeobotany
- Archaeological Education
- Archaeologies of Sexuality
- Archaeology
- Archaeology and Museums
- Archaeology and Political Evolution
- Archaeology and Race
- Archaeology and the Body
- Archaeology, Gender and
- Archaeology, Global
- Archaeology, Historical
- Archaeology, Indigenous
- Archaeology of Childhood
- Archaeology of the Senses
- Archives
- Art Museums
- Art/Aesthetics
- Autoethnography
- Bakhtin, Mikhail
- Bass, William M.
- Beauty
- Belief
- Benedict, Ruth
- Binford, Lewis
- Bioarchaeology
- Biocultural Anthropology
- Bioethics
- Biological and Physical Anthropology
- Biological Citizenship
- Boas, Franz
- Bone Histology
- Bureaucracy
- Business Anthropology
- Cancer
- Capitalism
- Cargo Cults
- Caribbean
- Caste
- Charles Sanders Peirce and Anthropological Theory
- Childhood Studies
- Christianity, Anthropology of
- Citizenship
- Class, Archaeology and
- Clinical Trials
- Cobb, William Montague
- Code-switching and Multilingualism
- Cognitive Anthropology
- Cole, Johnnetta
- Colonialism
- Commodities
- Consumerism
- Crapanzano, Vincent
- Cultural Heritage Presentation and Interpretation
- Cultural Heritage, Race and
- Cultural Materialism
- Cultural Relativism
- Cultural Resource Management
- Culture
- Culture and Personality
- Culture, Popular
- Curatorship
- Cyber-Archaeology
- Dalit Studies
- Dance Ethnography
- de Heusch, Luc
- Deaccessioning
- Design
- Design, Anthropology and
- Diaspora
- Digital Anthropology
- Disability and Deaf Studies and Anthropology
- Douglas, Mary
- Drake, St. Clair
- Dreaming
- Durkheim and the Anthropology of Religion
- Economic Anthropology
- Embodied/Virtual Environments
- Embodiment
- Emotion, Anthropology of
- Environmental Anthropology
- Environmental Justice and Indigeneity
- Ethics
- Ethnoarchaeology
- Ethnocentrism
- Ethnographic Documentary Production
- Ethnographic Films from Iran
- Ethnography
- Ethnography Apps and Games
- Ethnohistory and Historical Ethnography
- Ethnomusicology
- Ethnoscience
- Europe
- Evans-Pritchard, E. E.
- Evolution, Cultural
- Evolutionary Cognitive Archaeology
- Evolutionary Theory
- Experimental Archaeology
- Federal Indian Law
- Feminist Anthropology
- Film, Ethnographic
- Folklore
- Food
- Forensic Anthropology
- Francophonie
- Frazer, Sir James George
- Geertz, Clifford
- Gender
- Gender and Religion
- Gene Flow
- Genetics
- Genocide
- GIS and Archaeology
- Global Health
- Globalization
- Gluckman, Max
- Graphic Anthropology
- Grass
- Haraway, Donna
- Healing and Religion
- Health and Social Stratification
- Health Policy, Anthropology of
- Health, Race and
- Heritage Language
- HIV/AIDS
- House Museums
- Human Adaptability
- Human Evolution
- Human Rights
- Human Rights Films
- Humanistic Anthropology
- Hurston, Zora Neale
- Identity
- Identity Politics
- India, Masculinity, Identity
- Indigeneity
- Indigenous Boarding School Experiences
- Indigenous Economic Development
- Indigenous Media: Currents of Engagement
- Industrial Archaeology
- Institutions
- Interpretive Anthropology
- Intertextuality and Interdiscursivity
- Kinship
- Laboratories
- Landscape Archaeology
- Language and Emotion
- Language and Law
- Language and Media
- Language and Race
- Language and Urban Place
- Language Contact and its Sociocultural Contexts, Anthropol...
- Language Ideology
- Language Socialization
- Leakey, Louis
- Legal Anthropology
- Legal Pluralism
- Levantine Archaeology
- Liberalism, Anthropology of
- Linguistic Anthropology
- Linguistic Relativity
- Linguistics, Historical
- Literacy
- Literary Anthropology
- Local Biologies
- Lévi-Strauss, Claude
- Magic
- Malinowski, Bronisław
- Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and Visual Anthropology
- Maritime Archaeology
- Marriage
- Material Culture
- Materiality
- Mathematical Anthropology
- Matriarchal Studies
- Mead, Margaret
- Media Anthropology
- Medical Activism
- Medical Anthropology
- Medical Technology and Technique
- Mediterranean
- Memory
- Mendel, Gregor
- Mental Health and Illness
- Mesoamerican Archaeology
- Mexican Migration to the United States
- Migration
- Militarism, Anthropology and
- Missionization
- Mobility
- Modernity
- Morgan, Lewis Henry
- Multimodal Ethnography
- Multispecies Ethnography
- Museum Anthropology
- Museum Education
- Museum Studies
- Myth
- NAGPRA and Repatriation of Native American Human Remains a...
- Narrative in Sociocultural Studies of Language
- Nationalism
- Needham, Rodney
- Neoliberalism
- NGOs, Anthropology of
- Niche Construction
- Northwest Coast, The
- Oceania, Archaeology of
- Paleolithic Art
- Paleontology
- Performance Studies
- Performativity
- Personhood
- Perspectivism
- Philosophy of Museums
- Pilgrimage
- Plantations
- Political Anthropology
- Postprocessual Archaeology
- Postsocialism
- Poverty, Culture of
- Primatology
- Primitivism and Race in Ethnographic Film: A Decolonial Re...
- Processual Archaeology
- Psycholinguistics
- Psychological Anthropology
- Public Archaeology
- Public Sociocultural Anthropologies
- Race
- Religion
- Religion and Post-Socialism
- Religious Conversion
- Repatriation
- Reproductive and Maternal Health in Anthropology
- Reproductive Technologies
- Rhetoric Culture Theory
- Rural Anthropology
- Sahlins, Marshall
- Sapir, Edward
- Scandinavia
- Science Studies
- Secularization
- Semiotics
- Settler Colonialism
- Sex Estimation
- Sexuality
- Shamanism
- Sign Language
- Skeletal Age Estimation
- Social Anthropology (British Tradition)
- Social Movements
- Socialization
- Society for Visual Anthropology, History of
- Socio-Cultural Approaches to the Anthropology of Reproduct...
- Sociolinguistics
- Sound Ethnography
- Space and Place
- Stable Isotopes
- Stan Brakhage and Ethnographic Praxis
- Structuralism
- Studying Up
- Sub-Saharan Africa, Democracy in
- Surrealism and Anthropology
- Technological Organization
- Tourism
- Trans Studies in Anthroplogy
- Transhumance
- Transnationalism
- Tree-Ring Dating
- Turner, Edith L. B.
- Turner, Victor
- University Museums
- Urban Anthropology
- Value
- Violence
- Virtual Ethnography
- Visual Anthropology
- Whorfian Hypothesis
- Willey, Gordon
- Witchcraft
- Wolf, Eric R.
- Writing Culture
- Youth Culture
- Zoonosis
- Zora Neale Hurston and Visual Anthropology